


a wide margin

by reapingfolk



Category: Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:21:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reapingfolk/pseuds/reapingfolk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Gen is terrible with tightropes.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	a wide margin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [go_gentle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/go_gentle/gifts).



             Attolia has the look of one who has never fallen a day in her life. When she walks, her feet move with purpose, as though dutifully following a predetermined path. When she dances with anyone who is not Gen, her steps are measured and precise. When she moves, she demonstrates the effortless grace acrobats on tightropes show when there is no net to catch their mistakes. Attolia does not fear stumbling, does not fear falling, because fear is the slight breeze swaying the rope. It is the sudden uncontrollable shaking in your knees. It is the traitorous hand on your back nudging you ever so slightly.

             Gen is terrible with tightropes. He wants too much to jump and amaze, to be applauded for stunning the crowd. That desire to do what no one else could conceive of doing combined with the relentless fear of careening from his high perch towards the horrified audience made him, for years, want to stay on the ground. Though Eddis would have much preferred that — that he find some nice girl to do safe, simple performances with — Gen couldn’t help looking up and catching glimpses of Attolia, her head held high, resolutely refusing to look down. He saw how she kept herself from shaking and never once enjoyed her trip across.

             Gen wanted more than anything — more than security and nice girls, more than the pleased gasps of the crowd, more than the safety of Eddis, his family, and his home — to be there with her. 

— 

             Gen has only ever had variations of the same two nightmares. They would show up over and over again throughout his life. Gen’s grandfather would sometimes come to his room in the early morning and find the young boy sitting on his bed with his hair and shirt stuck to his body with sweat. Though he never confessed, Gen knew his grandfather could figure out the nature of his recurring dream.

             His grandfather would place a hand on his head and say, “We must all fall sometime. It is who we are. The only thing we can do is to push that day as far ahead of us as possible.”

             The only one who claims Gen’s mother was beautiful and believes it is the minister of war. Everyone else smiles and speaks of her other virtues, her courage and curiosity. She’s never beautiful in Gen’s dreams. In them, she’s always changing. Sometimes there’s a scar running down her cheek. Sometimes she has a broken nose like Eddis. Her hair is always flying every which way and he can never get a full look at her, only glimpses of a big, warm grin. With her eyes on Gen, she turns and spins, her feet light on the palace roof.

             Then it happens. She trips, she stumbles, she makes a wrong turn. She plummets. When she hits the ground, Gen wakes up. In his first nightmare, Gen sees his mother.

             In his second, he sees Attolia.  

— 

             A thief can steal the bags of gold lordlings toss up in the air like toys, the jewels hanging like a loose noose around a lady’s neck, or the works of art hanging on castle walls. A master thief can steal people — peasants and princesses, commoners and kings. The Thief of Eddis must be able to do all of that by the time his voice started to change, must be able to do that without thinking if he is to be of any worth to Eddis. The Thief of Eddis must be capable of more. He must be able to steal the insubstantial, the ephemeral, the spider webs of faith, the heavy chains of power, the knots of human love and greed and fear. He must be able to steal all this and, what’s more, must be able to give it all up. There were Thieves who had trouble with this final edict in the past. Their names are spoken of rarely and always with the same caveat. They were chosen incorrectly. Among their siblings, another should been trained in their stead. That other Thief, that shadow Thief, would have never tried to keep what he stole. When Gen thinks of those fallen ones in his long line, he laughs.

             He would never keep anything from Eddis. If she asked it of him, he would tie Sounis up in a bow and present him and his entire kingdom to his cousin. After Temenus broke her nose as a child, he found his favorite items disappearing for years thereafter. Temenus was never the favored brother — that title always belonged to Stenides, who taught Gen how to break apart problems and mechanically slide their solutions together — but he fell even further in Gen’s estimation after that. Eddis was more than Queen. She was friend and family and he felt for her how he felt about his kingdom, his imperfect, self-sufficient mountain region full of honesty and warmth.  He would never keep anything from Eddis

             Except for what he kept from everyone. Information.

—

             Because it is Gen who keeps information from others, it always comes as a shock to him when someone knows that which he does not. When Irene finally tells him, Gen does what he has always feared he would do — he falls.

             Though he doesn’t have to steal glimpses of Attolia any longer, he still finds satisfaction in doing so. He sees Irene every morning before anyone else. He and the early light of the sun are the only ones permitted to touch her face while it is still sleepy and soft, before she begins the work of constructing hard lines to meet her incoming servants and the looming day. In the time immediately after their wedding, Gen found that he was not the only one with nightmares. He would wake in the night to find Irene sitting by the window, staring out into the palace grounds. The sound of a lost wild animal scurrying in the walls would have her sitting upright, her spine like a soldier’s sword, until dawn. Before she dreamt of cutting off the hands of boys, she dreamt of what drove her to that decision. She dreamt of strangers climbing up towers, sneaking behind walls, waiting like failure and death to claim her.

             The last time Gen found her sitting by the window, he placed his hand on her shoulder. Irene didn’t flinch, but when she raised her face to look at him, her eyes made him think of screaming for mercy in a dungeon with the only one to hear him a beautiful, merciless creature. He swallowed his own fear and leaned down until his mouth was only a breath away from her own. When Irene closed her eyes, he slid his hand down her side before wrapping it lightly around her ribs. He could feel her breath coming in and out, could feel the rapid fluttering of her sparrow heart. He could feel her breasts resting on top of his hand and if he moved his thumb just slightly — but there was time for that later. For now —

             “Who are you afraid of seeing out there, wandering your gardens? Who are you hoping to catch scaling your palace’s defenses and walking soundlessly behind your bedroom walls?”

             “You,” Irene said and the word rushed from her lips to his own. It slid down his throat and became an urgent heat between his legs.

             “Yes,” Gen said, nodding slightly. “And it is. Know this, Attolia. While you sleep and while you wake, I am the one moving behind your walls. I am the one dancing on your roof. I am the one who can catch all others and who no one but you can catch. Only I.”

             He had to stop then and touch his lips to hers, just once, just briefly. But she leaned forward as he leaned back and he could not stop himself from lingering, from sliding his hand up and pushing past her open lips with his tongue. He tried to pull back again. She leaned forward so he settled for kissing the corner of her mouth. Then her cheek. Then the soft spot by her ear.

             “Only me, Irene," he whispered. "And you have caught me now. What then have you to fear? Who can ever defeat the Thief of Eddis, now and forever more Attolia's Thief?”

             When Gen pulled back to look at his wife, he felt the keen, physical effect of her beauty on him, as on the first night he saw a tall princess dancing defiantly on the precipice of loneliness. He thought this is what those fallen Thieves must have felt when they first beheld that rare jewel or had their first taste of power. And that one word, that one childish, damning word — _mine_.

             Gen doesn’t have to steal glimpses of Irene any longer, but he still does. Sometimes Irene would walk in the palace gardens and he would wait for her on a branch in her favorite tree. He would crow to himself that, this time, there would be no foolish Dite making infuriating confessions. He didn’t think Irene noticed his presence until she told him.

             Sitting on the bench underneath her favorite tree, Irene asked, “Has one of your sisters’ children been named the new Thief of Eddis yet?”     

             Gen wrapped his feet around a tree branch so that he could appear hanging upside down before the Queen of Attolia.

             “Did you always know I was up there?”

             He arched an eyebrow and, seeing that, Irene smiled and arched her own.

             “I assume you are everywhere at all times, Attolis.”

             Gen opened his mouth to grumble at her use of the title during a private moment, but Irene slid a hand in his hair to focus his concentration.

             “Attolis,” she said again and though her smile was not large, Gen could feel her happiness shining out of her like a beacon. It made him slightly delirious to be so close to her joy, to see it magnifying her beauty. Or maybe that was just the blood pounding in his temple. He wondered what could make her so happy. She had been subdued and worried in recent days.

             “Attolis. Attolia. Thief of Eddis. I wonder what title will most befit our first child.”

             When he opens his eyes, his head is in Irene’s lap. He thinks first that she will dirty her gown sitting on the grass like this and then he thinks of the last thing she said before his legs gave out and his body collided ungracefully with the ground.

             He feels it now, her source of unbridled joy. His greatest fear is nothing against Attolia, who could turn it with an arched eyebrow and an understated sentence, into such a wellspring of happiness. With Attolia, Gen would gladly do it again and again. He would dance on even higher rooftops, fall from even greater heights.

             “Irene,” he laughs as he wraps his arms around her waist and buries his face in her stomach. “Ah, Irene.”

**Author's Note:**

> if ya'll are about that tumblr life, i'm [noepithets](http://noepithets.tumblr.com).


End file.
